Olive pitting is currently effected in automatic machines to which, in addition to elements of which a description is not relevant hereto, clamps are used for holding the olive and a pitting piercer passes therethrough ahd thus also through the olives, therefore pitting said olives.
A considerably high efficiency, i.e., a substantial pitting speed, is achieved with such machines, thus obviously resulting in a minimum cost per pitted fruit or olive.
However, the actual clamps which hold the fruit and the pitting piercer used, in normal operation of the machine, result in breakage of or damage to a considerably large number of olives, which can reach up to about 14%, and more so in the commonly-named "gordales" or large olives.
Although the efficiency of such pitting machines renders same profitable despite the percentage of damaged olives as compared with previous pitting systems, such machines nevertheless pose a serious problem, for the percentage of broken or damaged olives is considerably high.
Despite the fact that there exist no mechanical solutions for reducing the percentage of damaged olives in such pitting machines, it has been determined that cooling the olives prior to pitting reduces the problem to a minimum, even up to the point that the percentage of olives damaged during the pitting process with adequate cooling is reduced to about 2% for the previously mentioned large olives.